Expert advice and insight on the latest industry trends

Welcome to Tech Treats, our weekly feature where we provide our clients with the latest news on all things digital marketing. From current trends and innovations, to fresh tips on getting the most out of your marketing spend, we’ll ensure you’re always kept in the loop!

Facebook introduces a Campaign Planner tool for advertisers

This month, Facebook introduced a Campaign Planner feature for the platform’s Business Managers.

As the Adweek’s SocialTimes has reported, the new Campaign Planner will enable advertisers to better plan their ad campaigns by providing predictions for their reach and frequency. These predictions can then be shared with others through a link or email.

Although details on the tool are limited, a few screenshots of how the Campaign Planner looks can be found below:

Google plans to index desktop and mobile search results separately

In a bid to push mobile search, Google will start indexing desktop and mobile search results separately. This means that while there will be a new mobile index that will be rapidly updated, there will also be a secondary index for desktop browsing.

Although an official date for this change hasn’t yet been announced, Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst, has revealed that it will be implemented in a matter of months.

The TJM take: As Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land has concluded, this change will allow Google to rank ‘pure’ mobile content, rather than basing mobile rankings on the desktop version of a website. Although this is a good step for ensuring the web becomes more mobile-friendly, one clear implication is that the desktop index could quickly become outdated.

LinkedIn rolls out 3 new features for their mobile app

Following a revamp of the LinkedIn feed (which has spanned the past few months), users will now be able to tailor the content they see on mobile to their specific interests.

How will this be achieved? As well as having the option to ‘hide’ updates from your connections, users will also be able to tap the 3 dots on the top right of any post to determine what they will and won’t see in their feed.

Other updates include the introduction of a new search box that enables users to find content by topic or hashtag, and a bookmark icon that lets you save interesting articles for later.

The TJM take: Despite being popular on other social networks (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+), LinkedIn’s first dabble into hashtags (back in 2013) proved to have a poor user response. Our gut feel is that the LinkedIn user base may now be more receptive to them.

Google Search Console now has an AMP testing tool

This new enhanced tool, which is mobile-friendly, has been introduced to ensure AMP implementation is working correctly. Using Google's live web-search infrastructure to analyses the AMP page with the real Googlebot, it tests the page’s markup and any structured data on the page.

If any issues are found, they can be clicked on to provide more details. A share button also allows you to share a screenshot of the results, enabling them to be shared and fixed more quickly.

The TJM take: If you’re not already using AMP, then we’d definitely recommend you start looking into it. This is something we plan to discuss with our clients in more detail in the coming months.

Facebook suspends ads in Thailand to honour late King Bhumibol Adulyadej

Facebook has temporarily blocked ads in Thailand following the death of the beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Thursday.

As The Next Web reports, this is the first time Facebook has imposed an ad block on an entire country, though it won’t affect any others. Additionally, although Facebook hasn’t announced how long the ad block will last, the country has entered a year-long period of mourning.

If any of our readers can confirm the logic of ‘=If(King>1,adverts,Noadverts)’ please do get in touch – we are stumped!

Are there any topics you’d like covered in future Tech Treats updates? Send us a message on social media or drop us an email.

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